Useful Memorization Tool: Anki

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I’ve stumbled across a well designed index/flash card app called Anki. Check it out.

The blurb on the site reads:

Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it’s a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.

The desktop and Android versions are free. The iPhone app will cost you $25. Your progress syncs up across all devices.

What’s really good about this app is that when you are shown the answer to a flash card, you rate how difficult you found it to recall that answer. The easier you found it, the longer the time delay before that card will be shown to you again. The app is also setup *not *to allow you to view too many cards in any single day, so as not to overload you (though you can override this setting if you think you know better).

Once you download and install Anki, go to the home screen and select ‘Get Shared’ – this will direct you to user-made sets of flash cards. There is a good variety of topics to choose from – most mainstream languages are there, as well as things like science, music and programming. Difficulty and quality inevitably vary, but I’ve found some great learning resources with very little effort.